Information

About Us

In 1812, Samuel Manor founded the historic Wade Plantation. Manor was a revolutionary soldier and after the war, he moved from North Carolina to South Carolina. Here he met George and Mary Williamson and from them he purchased 2,523 acres of land on the Savannah River on the Georgia side. Maner moved to his Screven County property and named his new home Lebanon Forest.

Samuel Maner built his home on the same place that the current Wade Plantation house is located. Maner was a faithful Methodist and he opened his home to traveling Methodist preachers. His daughter Sarah met and married one of these preachers, the Rev. John Crawford.

Around 1816, Samuel Manor passed away and Sarah and John inherited the Georgia plantation. John Crawford passed away a few years after this. He and Sarah did not have any children. Sarah then married another Methodist preacher, the Rev. Peyton Lisby Wade. Sarah passed away without having any children and the Rev. Wade married her niece, Elizabeth Robert. Together they expanded their property to over 10,000 acres.

Peyton and Elizabeth raised eleven children Peyton passed on in 1866 and left everything to Elizabeth and their children. After Elizabeth passed on, the Wade Plantation went to their seventh child, Jesse Turpin Wade.

Jesse Wade was born on Wade Plantation in 1851. He was educated at and graduated from the Virginia Military Institute. As master of Wade Plantation he was called Captain Wade, his rank in the local Screven County militia. At the age of 36 he married Elizabeth Jones.

In 1844 the original plantation home built by Samuel Maner burned to the ground. Captain Wade built a new home using timber cut and sawed on Wade Plantation. Under Captain Wade's guidance, Wade Plantation grew and ginned their own cotton. Captain Wade built a plant on the plantation in which the cotton seed was converted into oil and meal. Fertilizer for new crops was was also prepared in this plant. He had a railroad constructed on the plantation to transport his cotton to the Savannah river where steamboats waited to take the loads to Savannah.

Captain Wade sold the train and the railroad iron to the U.S. government in 1917. The train and iron was loaded onto barges at Burton's Ferry landing and taken to the Argonne Forest for the army's use at the end of WWI.

The Wade family owned and operated Wade Plantation until 1954 when it passed out of their hands.